Powell Calls His U.N. Speech A Lasting Blot on His Record

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

Published: September 9, 2005

The former secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, says in a television interview to be broadcast Friday that his 2003 speech to the United Nations, in which he gave a detailed description of Iraqi weapons programs that turned out not to exist, was ''painful'' for him personally and would be a permanent ''blot'' on his record.

''I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world,'' Mr. Powell told Barbara Walters of ABC News, adding that the presentation ''will always be a part of my record.''

Asked by Ms. Walters how painful this was for him, Mr. Powell replied: ''It was painful. It's painful now.'' Asked further how he felt upon learning that he had been misled about the accuracy of intelligence on which he relied, Mr. Powell said, ''Terrible.'' He added that it was ''devastating'' to learn later that some intelligence agents knew the information he had was unreliable but did not speak up.

Mr. Powell also implied in the interview that the United States did not go to war in Iraq with sufficient troops to secure the country and failed to keep sufficient Iraqi forces to help stabilize the country.

''What we didn't do in the immediate aftermath of the war was to impose our will on the whole country with enough troops of our own, with enough troops from coalition forces or by re-creating the Iraqi forces, armed forces, more quickly than we are doing now,'' he said.

But with Iraq still violent and plagued by sectarian conflict, the United States has ''little choice but to keep investing in the Iraqi armed forces and to do everything we can to increase their size and their capability and their strength.''

Since leaving office in January, Mr. Powell has declined interview requests. But his expressions of regret about the weapons intelligence and the lack of troops were consistent with many of his statements in office, especially after it became clear that Iraq had none of the weapons that Mr. Powell had said it was stockpiling.

He acknowledged several times that intelligence failures lay behind his presentation on the eve of the Iraq war two years ago, but he has never expressed any regret about the war itself. Asked by Ms. Walters, ''When the president made the decision to go to war, you were for it?'' Mr. Powell said, ''Yes.''

Asked about editorials asserting that he had put loyalty ''ahead of leadership,'' Mr. Powell parried the question. ''Well, loyalty is a trait that I value, and yes, I am loyal,'' he replied. ''And there are some who say, 'Well, you shouldn't have supported it, you should have resigned.' But I'm glad that Saddam Hussein is gone.''

Mr. Powell said he did not blame George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, for the failures and did not believe that Mr. Tenet tried to mislead him.

''No, George Tenet did not sit there for five days with me, misleading me,'' he said, referring to the week he spent at the Central Intelligence Agency reviewing the evidence on Iraq before making his presentation to the United Nations. ''There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up. That devastated me.''